


Shoot the Messenger

by godtiermeme



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Alternate Universe-No Titans, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-24
Updated: 2014-11-28
Packaged: 2018-02-26 20:31:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2665394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/godtiermeme/pseuds/godtiermeme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(An experiment in a different kind of Levi/Eren fic. Aside from the post-apocalyptic war setting, this fic toys with the idea of Eren and Levi not starting their relationship on amicable grounds.)</p><p>Eren Jaeger arrives with the blood of Levi's adoptive father on his hands and a final note to a son raised to be the leader of a struggling group of survivors. He is hated by the community and, most of all, by Levi. But, to fulfill a final request, the pair must work together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Gyroscope](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1731215) by [orphan_account](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account). 



> This really is experimental. I'll be tinkering with stuff from chapter to chapter and doing things a bit differently than usual. Hopefully you'll enjoy the ride, though (if it goes anywhere...). Also, for reference, this is from Levi's point of view.

I was never a particularly religious person. Hell, I’d only ever stepped foot into a church three times that I could remember. Still, on the day that I was appointed leader of the 104th division survivors—a collective of barely two hundred people—I couldn’t help but wander into one of those odd little buildings. Of course, at that point, it wasn’t really a building any more. Walls. Beams. Dirt. Stone. That’s about all that was left of it. Twisted metal hung overhead, though the roof it once supported had long since caved in.

A cross made of scavenged wood and held together with spare rope and layered, knotted cloth stood in the center of what was once an altar. I stood before it. Though I’d heard of it many times and given it a few casual glances, I never really looked at it. I knew that it had names of the dead etched into it, but I only realized then just how many names there were.

Now, it wasn’t really an official thing, and I was always told that it was a shitty habit of the people, but I always liked the thought. We never had time to bury the dead. We just wrapped them the best we could in whatever we could find before we left them on the outskirts of the community.

I glanced around, made sure no one was looking, and pulled out a beaten-up pocket knife. I pressed the dull tip into the wood and carved in a new name—Erwin Smith. I forced it into the first space I could find, and, in the end, it was so small that its letters were barely legible. But, hell, it was the least I could do.

From the day after the bomb dropped until that day, Erwin had been my father. He’d taken me in after finding me wandering through the ruins of the city. When I’d first met him, I ran. I hated him. But, long story short, I came to like him and trust him. He taught me how to fight and survive in the odd wasteland the world had become. Shit. He practically raised me.

Erwin Smith. Leader of the 104th rescue mission our group was named for. He found and saved everyone he could. Then, he led us to the city outskirts—to a cluster of abandoned but mostly intact rural homes and farms. He built an underground base. Surviving basements were salvaged and made deeper. Then, they were connected. He planned and oversaw farms and makeshift factories until they could run independently. To sum it up, over the span of two decades, he built a thriving improvised community from a deserted countryside.

And, suddenly, on a bitterly cold and desolate Christmas night, he was gone. Shot during patrol by one of the few stray rogues who passed through the area. But, to top it all off—as if the world hadn’t finished shitting out enough diarrhea bullshit on me—the bastard who shot him and some unknown girl showed up at my door that evening. (I wasn’t interested in the girl, though. No, I was more intent on strangling the bastard.)

He smelled of sweat, death, piss, and shit. His brown hair was matted together. What little clothes he had left—a long-sleeve shirt which lacked the majority of its right side, a pair of jeans degraded to a collection of patches—were covered in dried blood and mud. His face seemed to be set in a perpetual scowl, and his brow seemed to be permanently creased. His left foot was a lump of roughly shaped metal, and his exposed left arm was even less to look at—a metal mass of roughly cobbled together parts which started just below the elbow and ended as a two-pronged claw. And, top it all off, he came complete with a letter from Erwin.

Essentially, the note asked me for one last favor. I was tasked to keep an eye on the bastard—to integrate him into the community. Apparently, the son of a bitch’s name was Eren Jaeger. And, apparently, Erwin had a feeling that the criminal shit-stain had knowledge of things we didn’t—that he would be _useful_.

To me, though, he was anything but someone with any sort of promise. He was a shitty piece-of-trash stray. He was the worthless scavenger who’d killed the man I knew as my father because he apparently felt frightened. He was an angry, stubborn ass with an aptitude for nothing but being an absolute annoyance.

But, in light of Erwin’s request, I was personally forced into taking care of him.

A heavy sigh escaped me. I reached into my pocket, pulled out one of the odd flowers from the nearby uninhabited plains area, and set it before the wooden cross. Then, with less enthusiasm than someone about to jump into a pit of lava, I returned to my home.

Bunker 01.

The largest bunker of them all. It was carved from the basement of the old church and was the only bunker that had its own above-ground entrance. All the others were only accessible through the main underground corridor. This one, though, was really meant to double as both Erwin’s headquarters and as a shelter if anything catastrophic were to happen. So, really, we only occupied half of it. The other half—the part that the staircase opened to—was a collection of bunk beds and storage units. However, the other side—the side behind a scrap metal wall—that was home.

At least, it _had been_ home. It’d been where I could go after a long day and watch as Erwin tinkered with scrap metal and salvaged junk. It’d been where I’d go to when I needed somewhere quiet—somewhere peaceful. But, now, it was hell.

Every step I took down the spiral staircase weighed me down.

Erwin wasn’t there. He never would be. All I had now was the damned bastard who killed him.

I reached the bottom of the stairs. I reached the safety shelter. And, eventually, I reached the door

Everything was just as it always had been when I pushed it open that night. The bunk bed I shared with Erwin and the double bed Erwin made for when I had friends over were still against the opposite wall, hidden by a plain folding screen. The basement’s original wood stove still burned. Yet, there, sitting in Erwin’s armchair, was the filthy brat who killed him.


	2. Chapter 2

I knew the entire place like I knew my own name. Going anywhere was pure instinct. I walked the same path as I always had on the stupid “patrols” I went on as a child. Now, though, I was actually in charge of people. I actually had to take care of people. And, honestly, that scared the shit out of me.

I could barely hold myself together. Sure, I appeared fine, but I was breaking down. My mind was a massive heap of regrets and confusion. Why had I never told Erwin how much I appreciated him? How would he ever know that I looked up to him? Every so often, I had to force myself to remember that I wasn’t the only person I was responsible for. If I fell, the entire town would. Every so often, I kicked myself onward.

* * *

 

Around noon, I returned from my patrol to find Eren lain out on the ground. His metal foot was propped up on a clump of red fabric. The girl he had arrived with was sitting beside him, prodding at the leg with a dulled screwdriver and muttering to herself.

I paused.

Who the hell were they? How did they end up here? Of all the vast, deserted land out there, they came here. How? Why? Was it just because the world hated me? Probably. But, could it be more than that? Perhaps.

After a moment, I took my gun from where it hung on my shoulder and propped it back up on its display. Then, without so much as a nod of recognition to the pair, I wandered off into the space that Erwin and I liked to call “the den,” a portion of the room featuring a patched up couch, an old rug, and a table made of scrap metal and scorched wood. Upon this table, Erwin kept a small collection of book and magazines he found aboveground. I picked one of the books and random and opened it.

I wasn’t particularly keen on reading it. I just needed something to distract me from what was happening. I needed something to keep my mind from registering that those two filthy throwaways—the man who murdered Erwin and the girl who seemed to follow him for no real reason—were in the space I called home.

Yet, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t ignore them. Every time I was just about rid of any thoughts about them, a bolt would drop or something would scrape against metal. Crude salvaged gears ground like stone against a chalkboard and dull metallic ringing echoed in my mind.

They were there. They would be there forever, probably. Just to spite me. Just to be a reminder to me that the world wasn’t anywhere close to fair—that everything in the world wanted to shit on me constantly.

I dropped the book and stood up. “You can’t do this somewhere else?” I mumbled, turning my backs to the pair as I wandered back to my bed, hoping to find some sort of solitude there.

“Where else would we do it?” the girl replied. “We were told to come here.”

I ran my fingers through my hair and sighed. “Yeah, well, you’re not exactly welcome here.”

“I’ve noticed.” The girl shrugged.

My patience—already thin by default—was eroding. “Yeah, well fucking do something about it,” I growled. “Get the hell out of here.”

“We were told to stay here. We’ll leave once it’s necessary.”

Her words did it—I snapped. Everything boiled to the surface. “Get out of my bunker and get out of my town,” I snapped as I strode towards the disinterested girl. “Who the hell are you, anyhow? His goddamn servant? What, do you have nothing better to do than follow this bastard around?”

A blur of motion. Before I knew what was happening, I was suspended in the air, my eyes level with the girl’s.

“My name,” she growled, “Is Mikasa Ackerman. And I am no one’s servant. I choose to protect Eren as he chooses to protect me. Before you go around calling people slaves, try looking at yourself.” She let her grip on the front of my shirt loosen.

I hit the floor. The rage that had built up inside me had been extinguished—knocked out of me, if you will. And, suddenly, I realized that there was no one left to protect me. I protected the town. But, no one in the town had weapons but me and Erwin. And, now, Erwin was dead.

I didn’t reply.

I didn’t react.

Instead, I got up as if nothing had happened and walked out of the room. I ascended the stairs to the surface and wandered to the plains outside of town. There, I found my hiding place—a small grove of twisted, long-dead trees which cast shade over a small pond.

I sat by the edge of this pond—probably a decorative fixture at some point—and stared into the shallow water. I watched as my reflection rippled with every breeze—as it faded in and out of the realm of recognition.

Who was I, now?

I had been the boy adopted by a rescue worker and raised to be a leader. I had always thought of myself as Erwin’s son. He had, after all, cared for me after my own parents died. Hell, I knew nothing about my real parents.

And, at that point, another realization washed over me.

Was I important to Erwin? Who was I to him? Had I been a pawn for him to play with all this time?

No! No, of course not!

Yet, somewhere, in the back of my mind…


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is pretty quick. It's basically setting up for the first major plot arch. Or, maybe, the last major plot arch. It all depends on if this thing actually makes it past basic planning and into real story shit.

After arriving, Eren and Mikasa seemed to immediately follow their own routine. They woke late at night, wandered around the town for a while, and came back to sleep through the day. Often, when I woke in the morning, I’d find wild game hanging in the emergency bunker by their beds. I could only assume that they’d been wandering around alone for quite some time.

After a week or so, however, they seemed to break themselves of this habit. They woke earlier and earlier until, eventually, they were on the same schedule as everyone else. They woke at sunrise and slept after nightfall.

As a whole, though, they kept to themselves.

* * *

 

We’d been planning on constructing an additional wing of the bunker for a while. It was to have three family homes and five multi-purpose studios. Normally, the studios were used for shops or community entertainment. These, however, were to be reserved for residences. At the time, I had finished collaborating with the town architects to draw up the schematics. I only needed to find the materials.

Now, when Erwin added on, we used rescue reserves. He’d come with a massive amount of supplies, after all. Hell, the rescue workers each came backed by trucks of building materials and other necessary goods. Together, the supply could support one hundred families for ten years. By now, though, the shelter was edging on overpopulation and we had long since run out of building material. And it wasn’t new adults who needed homes. Rather, the problem was that people were fucking too much, to be upfront. Too many babies, not enough space.

Though, I can see where it came from. There wasn’t much to do for fun around town. Sex was probably the most entertaining thing that would happen to anyone there for weeks. And, though we had been supplied with birth control, we’d long since run out.

With that last fact considered, we’d only just finished adding a nursery to the schematic. And that, as a whole, added up. I didn’t really know the numbers. That was for other people to find out. What I did know was that it would require massive effort and quite a few guards.

Sure, there weren’t many survivors wandering around here that didn’t belong to the town. But, there was still the problem of wild animals. Aside from that, guards also watched out for signs of fire or other disasters.

So, as a whole, I was pretty damned busy.

On the third week anniversary of Erwin’s death and Eren’s arrival—two weeks after the plans for the addition were finalized—I set up a search party to comb the area for materials. It included myself and four others. Amongst the four was Mikasa, the girl who had arrived with Eren. I’d initially thought that I wouldn’t include her, seeing as she’d just shown up. However, her mechanical know-how and mostly level demeanor convinced me otherwise.

The following week—as the nights ceased to grow longer and the days got markedly colder—the group prepared to set off for a two week search. Bags were packed and everyone stood in the ruins of the old church.

I ran through the roll. As I went down the line, I reviewed my choices one final time.

Jean Kirchstein. 19. One of the first people born in the town. He was hot-headed, a bit self-important, but pretty damned useful. He had hunting and farming knowledge as well as training in self-defense.

Hanji Zoe. 25. A long-time friend of mine. She was the strategist of the group as well as the scientist.

Mikasa Ackerman. 20. Level-headed and skilled fighter. She also seemed to demonstrate a knack for mechanics and general survival skills.

And, then, there was the one I hated to admit was even there. Eren Jaeger. 18. As far as I was concerned, it was purely strategic. He meant nothing to me. Hell, I partially hoped he’d just disappear when we started. Even so, he obviously knew how to shoot and he seemed to have an aptitude for on-the-spot medical treatment.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and feedback are always welcome! You can find me at [tennantstype40](tennantstype40.tumblr.com) on Tumblr! Yay!? Also, I don't beta read, like, ever. So, hey. If you see typos, let me know! Thanks for reading!


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